In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
After those opening lines there was no way I could set that book down.
I am Sam.
…
…
Sam I am.
…
…
“That Sam I am! That Sam I am! I do not like that Sam I am!”
OR…
“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet say.”
Dangit, I meant day.
puddlegum:
Back in the days before “Cafe Society,” I started a very similar IMHO thread. There are some very decent selections in there, and not many have been repeated here.
Cheers.
Although these aren’t really first lines of books, the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest would make pretty good opening lines, and they’re pretty funny.
“Happy families are all the same. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
The Karenins end up proving that opening sentence quite well.
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Mine was in the old thread, so I endeavor,
12th Day of September
I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family. That is all there is to say.
Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortume to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fourtunes.
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne-Jones
Four small walls, sheathed with pine painted white. A window. A door onto the kitchen, for warmth. Two chairs. A bed, nearly filling up the room, like a bird held in cupped hands. Standing by the bed, squire beside his knight, a table bearing a Bible and a lamp. I’m certain you’ve stood in many such rooms.
The Borning Room by Paul Fleischman
and here’s the first paragraph of Valis, just for a taste,
Horselover Fat’s nervous breakdown began the day he got the phonecall from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals. He asked her why she wanted them and she said that she intended to kill herself. She was calling everyone she knew. By now she had fifty of them, but she needed thirty or forty more to be on the safe side.
- The Lovely Bones * begins something like: “My name is _____. I was 14 years old when I was murdered in 1973”
That is a paraphrase, but close. And it’s not lyrical and beautiful, but it certainly keeps you reading!
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by G.G. Marquez.
The MetamorphosisÑFranz Kafka:
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Compare that with the sentence which ends the story:
And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and excellent intentions that at the end of their journey their daughter sprang to her feet first and stretched her young body.
The entire story can be compressed into those two sentences: if you understand those two sentences, you understand the whole of The Metamorphosis itself.
Just for your information, there is a bookstore here in Chicago by that name. The Stars Our Destination, 1021 W. Belmont, Chicago, IL, (sorry, no zip) tel: (773) 871-2722.
As for my favorite opening, it has to be the first paragraph of Perfume by Patrick Sullivan. It grabs you and will not let you go!
[disclaimer] I’m translating from my Swedish copy[/disclaimer]
“Before Hale had been in Brighton for three hours, he knew they were going to kill him.”
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
Patrick Sullivan doesn’t sound right as the author of PERFUME (if it’s the PERFUME I’m thinking of). " Patrick" maybe.
Doesn’t the opening to “L’Etranger” go “Maman est morte”, not “Ma mere est morte”? That’s how I remember it.
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of EDEN, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of OREB, or of SINAI, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of CHAOS: Or if SION Hill
Delight thee more, and SILOA’S Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ AONIAN Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
Milton, Paradise Lost
How about that for a statement of intent!
And then:
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes–gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Dickens, Bleak House
Brilliant description, and not a proper sentence there . . .
In fact, reading it again now, the whole of that first chapter is inspired.
It’s Patrik Susskind.
“It was a dark and stormy night.” – That novel Snoopy never could get anyone to publish.
(And here I was going to say something about Snow Crash, but two people have already beaten me to the punch.)
I don’t know if this is the BEST, but it’s certainly my favourite (as near as I can remember it):
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it: the rest of me is on the draining board, which I have padded with the dog’s blanket and the tea cosy.”
From “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith (she wrote 101 Dalmatians)